11/01/2016

In my classic, well-worn corduroy, old-school way of thinking, voting for Question 2 is a no-brainer.

Chowder Schools are a crucial element in the history and tradition of New England. With recent technological advances including those little hand-held devices that are sucking the life out of life, time-honored cooking activities are rapidly draining from our charmingly unique region.

When was the last time that you enjoyed a delicately balanced and steaming cup of New England's most valuable treasure? Potato shards, fragmented clam pieces, butter, shredded bacon, thick cream all commingling and congealing in perfect heart-punding harmony – YUM!

For this old salt, the epicurean landscape has become congealed with cookie cutter eateries where meals are removed from the freezer, unpackaged, zapped, and slapped onto an awaiting food receptacle. The result is a lukewarm beige substance that tingles the palette with less enthusiasm than a spoonful of latex ceiling paint.

It is a far time that taxpayer dollars are directed to the rejuvenation of a food form soon destined for cardiac arrest and eventual death!

Please join me, Scrim Shaw, and vote 'YES' on Question 2 so that we can build the Chowder Schools necessary to advance and protect a New England gastronomical jewel!

05/01/2013

Cancer The Crab (June 21 to July 22) :: An excellent month for finding the perfect match, though probably not for you. Avoid all cracks or you may break your mother’s back. True story.

Leo The Lion (July 23 to August 23) :: This will be a month of rain and wonder for you, no matter what is happening elsewhere in your house. Be open to new people and new ideas, but not New Jersey.

Virgo The Virgin (August 24 to September 22) :: Someone close to you will have a very big secret soon. It will involve ketchup and a long lost aunt. Act surprised when you hear it, but be prepared to use your ATM often once it’s all in the open.

Libra The Scales (September 23 to October 23) :: Experiment with your wardrobe this month. Free yourself from the conventions of “tops” and “bottoms.” Make a hat from grass—any kind.

Scorpio The Scorpion (duh!) (October 24 to November 21) :: Small children will find you amusing during this period, although the police may have different ideas. This is a wonderful month to try driving with your toes, but not in busy streets or near cliffs. Tie ribbons in your hair, especially your leg hair.

Sagittarius The Archer (November 22 to December 21) :: Your rash will finally heal, but your neighbor will find a similar growth on his cheese so turn down any dinner invites for at least two months.

Capricorn The Mountain Goat (December 22 to January 19) :: A female in your family will develop bird-like habits, including walking along the wires outside your home. I counsel keeping your distance, but please take lots of photos and forward them to Tiny Mind Gazette. Who knows? She may be starting a trend, or even expressing a genetic mutation.

Aquarius The Water Carrier (January 20 to February 19) :: This is a wonderful time to break out of your shell. I suggest role-playing. For example, walk into a furniture store and pretend to be a salesperson—give enormous discounts on a living room set and watch the fun ensue. Or buy a can of yellow spray paint, knock on a random door, and tell the occupants you need to mark areas for DigSafe, and then make lines all over their carpet. Isn’t this invigorating?

Pisces The Fish (February 20 to March 20) :: A good month to experience nature. Stand in the woods until a tree falls and listen for a sound. Look for hives made by chipmunks. Invite a badger family to play backgammon or ping pong. Count the rings on a living tree.

Aries The Ram (March 21 to April 20) :: Yes, this is the time to try that thing you’ve been wanting to do. But timing is everything. Ready?......Wait….hold on…… just a bit longer…good, now…hold it……good……okay: swallow! Was it everything you hoped? Okay, now give it back to the cat.

Taurus The Bull (April 21 to May 20) :: Shave your parmesan extra thin, and nail the longer pieces to your front door. This will ward off the bad luck that was heading your way.

Gemini The Twins (May 21 to June 20) :: No one needs to know what’s in your backyard, so don’t feel a need to discuss it, especially during any random radio interviews. It’s a good month for you to look skyward often. When using fast food restaurant sugar or condiments, open all those little packets from the back side only.

Send all your astrological queries to Beau Donie, c/o Tiny Mind Gazette. They will be ignored in the order in which they are received.

Jane Peyton, volunteer outreach coordinator for the Greyote Rescue League, will oversee the Feline-Canine Fashion Show (to benefit the local chapter of Animal Hoarders Anonymous). Highlights include Persian cat hair wigs, hair extensions and shoulder bags modeled by Shari Bing (author of the Vegan Margarita Diet Cookbook) and a song-and-dance tribute to “Cats” by local politician and pianist Dina Canady. Rumor has it that ambulance-chaser/stand-up comic Craig Barkin might make a surprise appearance (leaving his own birthday party) to do his famous dog jokes and Huckleberry Hound impersonations.

02/16/2013

Over the years, I have contemplated Armageddon hundreds of times. Not in a how do I achieve it sort of way, but more along the lines of what happens when civilization breaks down and the ants – or worse, the programming department at MTV – take over.

Pop culture has prepared me for a worst-case scenario, normally to the sound of a power ballad and the sight of some last heroic act of defiance. With the destruction of most of the planet the natural consequence of this anticipated disaster, a plucky band of survivors sets out to rebuild society, while fighting off zombies or Republicans.

This is, of course, utter bobbins. Probably because most people would treat the decline of Western civilization as a chance to feather their own nest – genetic mutation! – and get on with their lives in some self-serving way that they had before the asteroid/alien attack/zombies had even been predicted by the small group of intellectuals that monitor such events.

There is also the concept that humanity is only three meals away from anarchy (probably thought up by a deep thinker such as Marx, Nietzsche or Plato). Deprive human beings of food and we revert back to a version of Homo sapiens that used clubs as a way of making their point.

Sadly, even the three-meal theory goes out the window in our 21st century dystopia.

How do I know this? Because I watched it happen. And it had nothing to do with food, and everything to do with mobile devices.

Perhaps I should explain. I live in a tiny town about 45 minutes south of Boston, inhabited by a significant proportion of the one-percent and their ever-growing brood of potential venture capitalists.

Most of them are great people, living the American Dream in a community that exists in a strange state of being connected to the outside world and yet seemingly isolated from the misery of the modern world.

Put it this way, I don’t lock my car at night – although that could be because I want somebody to nick it!

Anyway, I digress. On February 9, my little town of Eastwick/Dobbs Mill (the name has been changed to protect the soccer moms and little leaguers) got hit with a snowstorm.

Nothing unusual about that, it’s the Northeast of the U.S., winters can be harsh and most people in the town spend their weekends skiing anyway.

Snowpocalypse shuts down small town

For anyone that doesn’t live on the East Coast of the U.S., the blizzard – inexplicably called ‘Nemo’ by The Weather Channel - that hit us that Friday night is probably filed away under the category of “whatever.” After all, if you live in New Orleans or in Los Angeles, then big loads of snow are less interesting than hurricanes, earthquakes or wildfires.

Roads were shut, plows came out and the area descended into darkness. The pub stopped serving at around 10 and the inhabitants either went to bed or got in their SUVS and drove into Boston. For those of us that couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel, we just put some extra clothes on and went to sleep, naively believing that this America in the 21st century and that the power would be back sooner rather than later.

To cut a long story short, it wasn’t. For most of us, it didn’t come back until nearly three days later, although there were some surrounding towns that either lost nothing or spent several days huddled around a hastily purchased generator.

“Eastwick” officials, in their infinite wisdom, decided that providing some sort of emergency shelter was probably a good idea, mainly for the elderly and families whose entertainment systems had shut down. One presumes that this was all part of a well-thought out disaster plan, a scenario that had been discussed at length in the hallowed corridors of the local town hall.

To be fair, it was a good idea. It gave people somewhere to go, hot meals and coffee (saving us from the possibility of anarchy) and, the rumor was, it would have a Mobile Device Charging Point. The important thing to remember is that they never said that it would have lots of charging points…just one.

Anyone following my trail of breadcrumbs may have realized where the problem was going to lie in this plan.

Humanity can’t survive without mobile phones. To be fair, it seems that we also can’t survive without iPads, iPhones, laptops and mobile gaming systems. One charging point was always going to be subject to an undignified display of territorial pissing.

However, once again, the organizers of the “warming center” had thought of this. Yes, it was one point, but it had numerous power strips all connected to a central electrical outlet. More than enough, one would think for everyone to obey the simple 45-minute charging rule that was written in black ink on a sheet of A3 stuck to the wall.

There are no prizes for guessing that it wasn’t.

When I got there – having run my Windows phone down to it’s bare bones – the MDCP was covered in phones, tablets and laptops. Small children could be heard asking when their iPad would be ready, harassed parents spent their time trying to pretend that they weren’t breaking the 45-minute rule while unplugging any device that had a charger obstructing their access to a socket.

If it wasn’t anarchy, it was a fairly good impression. Mobile devices were charged, swapped around, delivered to small child – despite the fact that we were in a school, hence there were books to read! – and then the whole process would start again.

And in the middle of all this apparent chaos, a group of senior citizens sat quietly in their deck chairs and did something unusual…they engaged in conversation. Not one of them made their way to the MDCP, keeping warm was more important, a priority that seemed to be secondary to the younger residents of “Dobbs Mill,” most of whom wanted to know why they couldn’t use Facebook or play Angry Birds.

Three meals from anarchy? Try three hours with no mobile device…the decline of Western civilization is well and truly underway. And it took a blizzard in New England to make me realize that humanity may not be up to the challenge.

Yikes! Close call. Despite previous report, youngest was NOT eaten. Was actually wicker rocking chair. It was very dark and kerosene headlamp was malfunctioning.

Spent much of last evening dodging board game invitations from fellow survivors. Put end to “Yahtzee-pa-looza” be hiding three dice in cheeks (like Chipmunk). Swallowed first one around midnight. The others were most likely ingested around 3:00 AM while I was experiencing a nightmare involving the Seneca Casino in Salamanca NY and the Oscar Mayer wiener mobile.

More later.

Blizzard Journal, Day #4.5

Standing in line with approximately 60 weary castaways, for generator that local artisan has constructed out of palm branches and coconuts. He claims to be a survivalist who gained his knowledge from watching every episode of Gilligan's Island at least 70 times. Not sure if it will work but you can't beat the price. $40.

Wapatusset residents proved to be hearty and resourceful New Englanders during last weekend's historic snow storm. But cabin fever quickly swept through the small coastal community as heat and personal hygiene went out the window. While some took off to northern ski cabins, relatives' homes and 5-star hotels, others roughed it out in nearby cafes, desperately seeking warmth, wifi and a bit of "personal space" away from loved ones.

Tuesday, Feb 12

2:33 p.m. Fair Isle Ln: Noise complaint. Neighbor calls to report day #2 of screaming children next door. Sounds of “manic wailing." Officer advises parents to swap Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land board games for Apples to Apples instead.

Wednesday, Feb 13

5:34 p.m. Oak St: Woman calls to inquire about legality of eating roadkill. Claims neighbor has been cooking wild animals ("and possibly rabid raccoons") on gas grill and is afraid to let her pets outside. Says neighbor has "wild look in his eye." Animal control officer dispatched to scene.

Thursday, Feb 14

7:45 p.m. North Plain St: Well-being check. Power restored but resident still sitting in dark, reading by candlelight. Officer checks light switches and asks if cable and Internet have been restored. Resident confirms but requests "Don’t tell the kids.”

02/02/2013

Aquarius (January 20 to February
19) :: Consider the arts. Consider the sciences. Now consider that in most
zoos, the appropriate position of the creatures inside the bars and outside the
bars are tragically reversed.

Boehner the Resistor (February 19.1 to February 19.9) :: Call up someone important
today. Oppose any attempts to compromise your true feelings, no matter how
uncertain you are. Visit North Korea. Stay there.

Pisces The Fish (February 20 to March 20)
:: Travel travel travel. Buy maps and a GPS and a fine walking
stick, and away you go. Bring scented soap and a recipe for making stew from
oak leaves. If you can’t speak a foreign language, make one up.

Aries The Ram (March 21 to April 20) :: Hope
is not a plan. You must get out and participate in life. Move your money into safer investments such
as iron. It’s really heavy and much harder to steal than software. Take more
walks in the starlight. Be open to love. But carry Mace.

Gemini The Twins (May 21 to June 20)
:: The twins experience a rough period. But then things cool down.
Then they ramp up again. Then they relax a bit. But JUST when they get comfortable,
something goes really haywire. But they get over it and eventually all is
smooth. But only for a half-hour, then friggin’ mayhem again. Best to stay home
under the covers for a while. Bring canned goods and a flashlight.

Cancer The Crab (June 21 to July 22) :: Others
will notice your change before you notice it yourself. They may compliment you,
but don’t believe it—it is a way of covering shock. Once you identify the
problem (hint: mirror), get yourself to a veterinarian as fast as possible and
have it removed. Then, before you reenter social company, be ready with a
really good explanation, because that stuff hasn’t happened since the days of
LSD.

Leo The Lion (July 23 to August 23) :: Take
advantage of the New Year by reinventing yourself. This is an intellectual, not
a biological exercise. Previous readers have misplaced essential body parts.
Remember, “wearing your heart on your sleeve” is just a figure of speech.

Virgo The Virgin (August 24 to September 22)
:: This is an excellent month for you to eat foods that begin with the
letter “R.” But remember to ramp up your exercising. Love may be waiting right
around the corner, but if it jumps out of a cardboard box, keep walking.

Libra The Scales (September 23 to October 23)
:: Give
vent to your compulsive side. Plan a “Dance to Autumn” party.
Send out invitations today and allow the event to entirely consume you for the
next six months. Assign, reassign, and reassign seating arrangements once more until
you get writer’s cramp. Visit numerous flower shops and bakeries. Make giant
origami from sheets of industrial aluminum. Audition bands in your basement.
Pass out leaflets at elementary schools. Carry cash for bail.

Scorpio The Scorpion (duh.) (October 24 to November
21) :: Be more fun at the
workplace. In your next meeting, pretend you’re an
astronaut and there’s no bathroom on board. When you turn in your next report,
sign it in ketchup. Have a wooikie record your voicemail message. Watch how
people start reacting to you differently.

Sagittarius The Archer (November 22 to December 21)
:: It’s time to clean up your
language. Respect others more and you’ll gain more respect. Water your plants
and your pets on alternate days. If a policeman steps up to you, whistle show
tunes as rapidly as possible.

Capricorn The Mountain Goat (December 22 to January 19)
:: Romance is in the wings, perhaps an old flame will renew or a new
one will ignite. In any case, wear asbestos over vital areas. Now is not the
time to be shy. If an attractive person approaches you, declare your feelings:
“You’re hot!” or “You make me feel like a natural woman!” or “Boxers or briefs?—who
cares?—let’s all go commando for the weekend!”

For February, Beau Donie is available for free personal psychic consultations every Monday through Thursday,
6-9pm at the main branch of the Wapatusset Library. “Find me under “s” for “sychic.””

11/21/2012

If you’re a true hipster, you probably haven’t given the holiday much thought. Until now. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, so it’s probably time to make some plans. And buy some food. Whatever you do, don’t try too hard. Or at least don’t look like you’re trying too hard.

If you are a so-called ironic hipster, you’ve probably been planning for weeks and are carving a butter-sculpture centerpiece right this minute. In an ugly sweater. We’ve provided some extra tips for those of you looking to do it up, lamestream style.

Some basic do’s and don’ts to start:

GuestsInvite an assortment of friends, co-workers, black-sheep family members and drifters. Include at least one hipster who looks like a homeless person.

Alternative plan: Shave beards, set hair with curlers, and dress like 1950s sitcom family members. Disregard all hipster rules above and set perfect table and traditional turkey dinner. Order from restaurant if necessary.

09/07/2012

A naked 42-year-old Massachusetts man was apprehended when he attempted to enter the Wapatusset Middle School at 7:48 a.m. on Wednesday, the second day of school. Witnesses say he was banging on the locked door and yelling into the intercom.
“He kept repeating something about forgetting his French homework and his locker combination. I couldn’t really make out what he was saying,” said the school secretary.

Man's "worst nightmare" realized.

Police chief Liam O’Liam (above) said the man was released after his wife [name withheld by request] posted bail. The wife declined to be interviewed but said she thought her husband, an executive at a Boston business firm [name withheld by request], "might have taken an extra Ambien" the night before.

9. Mix several different kinds of shampoo together in a recycled bottle. Create an alluring name on a hand-written label.

10. Rather than the traditional orange-stuck-with-cloves, cut down your carbon footprint and find local fruit (like an aged crabapple) and decorate with fragrant alternative (Pakalolo stems, old TicTacs...) -- and/or bedazzle for the perfect hostess gift.

Got more ideas for hyper-local shopping? Leave in the Comments field below!